Atdict is an experiment to create Tcl dictionaries that behave somewhat similarly to Javascript objects: keys can be accessed using "." notation and methods are assigned to keys.

Create a dictionary:

set myobj [@]

Assign a value to a key:

@ myobj.name = "Fred"

Assign the value of an expression to a key:

@ myobj.name := {$x + $y}

Retrieving the value of a key:

puts [@ myobj.name]

Define a method on the object:

@ myobj.greeting -> {who} { puts "Hello, $who!" }

Calling a method:

@ myobj.greeting: "World"

Methods have access to the dictionary via the "this" variable:

@ myobj.double -> {key} {
    @ this.$key := {2*[@ this.$key]}  
}

Methods are implemented as lambda expressions and executed using apply.

At present, atdict doesn't handle nested dictionaries, though it easily could:

@ myobj.record.first = "Joe"

And of course it could all be faster, and error handling could be better.

It would of course be much faster if it were implemented in C; and it could be even better if it were a new Tcl syntax:

@myobj.greeting: "World"